Summary: <h4 style="font-weight: normal;">In which WtF Dragon comments on Warren Spector's SXSW lecture on “the dangers of thinking of games as fun” and raises some objections thereto. Because the real danger is the idea that fun is necessarily the same as escapism.</h4><a id="more-5773798"></a><p style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id978223252">Subscribe on iTunes</a> | <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/spam-spam-spam-humbug">Subscribe on Stitcher</a></p><h4 style="font-weight: normal;">Intro</h4><p style="font-weight: normal;"><em>Ultima Music Market Place </em>Uploaded by Pekka Leppäluoto - <a href="https://youtu.be/xO-lLTo8HUI">https://youtu.be/xO-lLTo8HUI</a></p><h4 style="font-weight: normal;">Podcast Topic(s)</h4><p style="font-weight: normal;">Warren Spector, presenting at SXSW earlier this month, gave a talk on “the dangers of thinking of games as fun”. (<a href="http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/sxsw-warren-spector-on-the-dangers-of-thinking-of-games-as-fun/">http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/sxsw-warren-spector-on-the-dangers-of-thinking-of-games-as-fun/</a>)</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">In it, he quoted a study that stated the value of the gaming industry, globally, is around $94 billion. He then went on to ask why games, despite the fact that the industry has outpaced the film and television industries, remained in a sort of cultural ghetto. His answer: that at least part of it has to do with the metrics used to measure a game’s success: namely, the idea that what makes a game successful is whether it is fun or not. Which, it would seem, he is opposed to.</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">“People thought movies were trivial at one point, and now you can get a [film studies] PhD,” Spector said. “People thought that popular music wasn’t worth studying. People thought that television wasn’t worth studying …. [New forms of] media start out as outliers, and then over time they either go away or they become inside …. We’re a pretty darn central part of culture.” And yet, in spite of the fact that games are everywhere, Spector feels that “the dialogue surrounding them has failed to catch up.”</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">Continuing along this line of thought, Spector went on to argue that those who write about games need to ask how the game fits within the surrounding culture — what does it say about gender roles or politics, for instance? It’s not enough to write off a game as “escapism.”</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">“The obvious question to ask is what are they escaping from and what are they escaping to,” he said.</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">Now, Warren Spector is a well-respected game designer, a luminary of the industry, and I'm just a guy with a microphone and a website. So, take what I'm about to say with as many grains of salt as you see fit...but I think the good Mr. Spector errs somewhat in his arguments here. Because he's right: games are a fundamentally different form of entertainment than television, cinema, or music. TV shows, movies, and songs on our iPods...we are passive participants in these forms of entertainment. We don't get any input into them; they are created only for us to sit back and take in.</p><p style="font-weight: normal;">Games aren't like that; games are designed for us to interact with. Something happens in the game, and we — the player — respond to it. And then the game responds to our response in some way; there's a back and forth of action and reaction that takes place, and it is by that means that we navigate through the circumstances of the game, through its world and story. And <strong>fun</strong> — the notion that there is something in that action/reaction dynamic that produces enjoyment on the part of the player — is central to the idea of what a game is. I suppose I could cite Raph Koster's <em>A Theory of Fun</em> here, but...if a game isn't fun for the players, players won't stick with the game even if it has a really </p>
